And If I Die

by John Aubrey Anderson

  The pick-up men were jogging their horses out to haze the stubborn bull back to the exit chute; he was holding up the show. Cowboys were spotted along the railing around the arena, some watching the bull, others talking to friends in the stands. The horsemen took no notice of Will and his friends.

  Mann watched as Sundown pawed the earth and waggled his horns. The bull blew into the dirt and bellowed. Uh-oh—thirty yards of clear ground between three men and a bad bull isn’t as much as I’d ask for. Without taking his eyes off the bull, Mann called over his shoulder, “Clark, come over here and get Will.”

  Roberts was already over the railing; he’d been watching the bull too. “I got ’im.”

  The people in the immediate vicinity—the ones who could see Will was injured—were on their feet. Men were yelling instructions. Women were holding their hands over their ears and screaming for someone to help the three men. Young children were clutching at their parents’ legs.

  It was time for Bob Pierce to intervene.

  He started to move forward and realized that his wife’s hand was locked on his arm. He slipped his fingers under hers, lifted her hand, and put his lips next to her ear. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  When she heard his voice, his wife turned her eyes on him and said simply, “You bring that boy”—she was pointing at the arena—“with you.”

  He winked without smiling, nodded, said a businesslike, “Yes’m,” and stepped down through the crowd toward the fence.

  Nudging people aside, pushing gently but firmly, Pierce tried to make his way toward the rails. The crowd was intent on the action in front of them, and few people noticed the man brush by them—they noticed less that his lips were moving in a silent, one-sided conversation with an unseen Person.

  Next time he’d buy tickets on the front row.

  Roberts had one of Will’s arms over his shoulder and was helping him hobble to the fence. If the bull decided to charge and Will couldn’t climb, the deputy would need help to get him over the barrier.

  Sundown chose that moment to erase all speculations about his intentions. Someone in the stands watching the three cowboys saw what was coming and yelled, “Look out!!!”

  The bull was already running—digging at the dirt like a racehorse, straining to accelerate.

  Mann sidestepped to put himself in the bull’s path.

  The pick-up men spurred their horses, but they were too far away to help.

  Bill Mann took three steps toward the charging bull and slipped off his hat.

  In the stands, a well-groomed forty-five-year-old woman turned away from the scene and bowed her head. Lord God in Heaven, God of the impossible, spare this brave boy and our son.

  On the other side of the arena, Missy Patterson closed her eyes and whispered, “You are our strong fortress, Father, our very present help.”

  Bob Pierce stopped halfway to the railing and began to pray more earnestly.

  Mann held his arms apart and yelled, “Whoa, bull!”

  Sundown’s eyes went wide with fear. He braced all four legs and made his third panic stop in the last thirty seconds, sliding in a shower of dirt and sawdust to within three feet of Bill Mann. Mann stepped out of a cloud of suspended silt and dust and slapped the bull on the nose with his hat. “Git yourself where you’re supposed to be.”

  The bull recovered and whirled toward the exit. The stands were silent for long seconds, then the clapping started. Just clapping at first, then yells and whistles.

  Mann used his hat to knock some of the dust off and walked over to check on his friend.

  Bob Pierce went back to get his wife.

  Missy and SuAnne Pierce collapsed into their respective seats and thanked a gracious God for His intervention.

  The crowd watched Bill Mann talking to his friends.

  When her husband reached her, SuAnne said, “We owe that boy.”

  Her husband had tears in his eyes. “That man.”

  She took his arm and said, “C’mon. They’ll take him back there behind the chutes.”

  Will tried to put his bull rope over his shoulder.

  “Watch it there, old son,” Roberts cautioned. “Don’t be twisting around like that, you could stick a hole in your lung.”

  “Here.” Mann put out his hand. “Gimme the rope, Will.”

  Will grimaced and extended the hand with the rope in it. “I never broke a rib before. If I was choosin’, I think I’d rather have this happen to one o’ y’all.”

  They were under the nearest public-address speaker when it blared, “Folks, the judges tell us that ride was worth eighty-four points for Will Pierce, the cowboy out of Pilot Hill, Texas. Let’s have a big hand for Will and our other riders.”

  “Boy, you’re gonna be the one to beat now.” Mann grinned at the boy who was concentrating on breathing without causing himself pain.

  “Congratulations, Will,” Bledsoe announced. “That puts an end to the bull riding for tonight with Will Pierce in the lead by two points. You folks come back here tomorrow night for the second round, and we’ll see who’s gonna be leading for the final go-round on Sunday. Be sure and be here.” Bledsoe continued with his description of what would take place in Saturday night’s events while Mann and Roberts accompanied Will toward the chutes.

  They went through the gate under the press box and stopped by a beat-up wooden bench. Roberts eased Will to the wall and stood between him and the press of behind-the-scenes people and horses making their way back and forth in the passageway.

  “Throw that gear on the bench, Bill. I’ll prop Will up against this pole while you walk over yonder and get the EMT guys.”

  Will was starting to turn pale. “I don’t need any help. I can—”

  “Yeah, right.” Roberts shook his head disgustedly then grinned. “Boy, you need to act like you’ve got some sense. If your rib is busted, then you need to get it fixed before somebody bumps into you and pokes it through your gizzard.” He turned back to Mann, “Tell ’em I said to bring a stretcher. Okay?”

  The messenger was already on his way. He raised a negligent hand as he walked off. “Yes’r. We’re hurrying.”

  Mann weaved between people and animals for a dozen steps and almost ran into the two uniformed paramedics; he knew the one in front. “Hey! I was just coming to get you guys. Where you going?”

  The Denton firemen continued on their mission, and Mann turned to fall in step with them. Tommy Perrin, the taller of the EMTs, was a graduate of Pilot Hill High School. His partner was Tommy Thompson from Denton.

  “Hey, Bill. You’re late, boy.” Perrin was the spokesman for the two-man team. “Somebody said Will bunged up a rib. That right?”

  “Aw, he’s not hurt,” kidded Mann. “He got cold feet when he thought about going up against the real riders tomorrow night. I’d say he’s trying to bow out of this thing gracefully.”

  They kept moving the short distance through the crowd, arriving to find Roberts and Will as Mann left them.

  “Mann here says you’re fakin’ it, Will.” Perrin was watching the injured rider’s face as he spoke. “Which side are you pretendin’ it’s on?”

  Will didn’t change expression. “Tommy, this ain’t comfortable by a long shot—and if you make me laugh I’ll tell my mom you did this yourself.”

  Tommy nodded silently, unrolled a blood pressure cuff from the box on the litter, and put it aside. “I reckon that’ll serve to keep me quiet for a week or two.” He pointed at Little Tom. “Roll it in close an’ let’s strap it to him in the vertical an’ then tilt him an’ the litter back to horizontal. We might can keep down the movin’ an’ bendin’, whatcha think?”

  “I like it. Gimme a second to drop this baby.”

  They collapsed the litter, strapped Will to it while he was still standing, and with the help of a few bystanders they moved him from standing to lying without his having to bend at the waist. By the time they had the wheels down, the rider’s parents were at his side. Will was apprec
iably paler.

  “What ya’ll doin’ down here? I’m fine. Ain’t I, Tommy?”

  Bob Pierce spoke so his wife could hear. “Everybody knows you’re gonna be fine, son.” He moved aside to let the woman behind him step forward.

  The lady looked down at her oldest child, took in the fact that he didn’t appear to be in extreme danger, and smiled at him. “It is not necessarily mandatory that a rodeo be this exciting, is it?”

  She touched the sleeve of her son’s shirt with a trembling hand, then looked at the senior medic over her granny glasses. “Is he all right?” Her expression was the “don’t-lie-to-me-boy” one Tommy had seen once or twice in the seventh grade.

  “He’s fine. He’s gonna be sore tomorrow, but that’s all.”

  She backed a step. “You drive carefully, Thomas.”

  She was the only person on the planet who called him Thomas. “Just like haulin’ eggs, Miz Pierce.” He grinned at her.

  “SuAnne,” she corrected.

  He grinned at her and blushed. “Yes’m . . . SuAnne.” He looked at SuAnne’s husband. “We’ll see ya’ll at the hospital, Bob.”

  The man lifted his hand and nodded at the retreating uniform.

  The EMTs merged into the crowd, and the Pierces turned to Bill Mann. Bob put out his hand. “Thanks.”

  Mann smiled. “Sure.”

  SuAnne Pierce looked for a long time into the young man’s eyes. Bill Mann had been her son’s best friend for eight straight years—the two boys slept at each other’s houses, worked together at the feed store, and ate whatever was in her refrigerator, on her stove, or in her pantry. When words failed her, she kissed him on the cheek and patted him on the arm.

  He took off his hat and ducked his head.

  The couple turned and walked in the direction of the midway. They were silent for several seconds, seemingly oblivious to the people they were passing. Her first words were, “I was worried.”

  “Mmmm. We were both worried, hon.”

  “He looked okay, didn’t he?” She was better after seeing the boy, but it didn’t hurt to get some assurance.

  “He looks great. I mean it.” They walked for a few seconds. “I’ll call Alan to come down and look at his chest. The ER guys can do it, but Alan looks at ten a day. I’d like him to see the X-ray before Will leaves the hospital.” His voice had less edge to it now that they knew the boy was better.

  The excitement was over, and Mann was using his hat to knock off as much dirt as he could.

  “What bull’d you draw for tomorrow?” asked Roberts.

  “The best there is.” Mann grinned. “Mr. Sweet Thing himself.”

  “Boy, if you can stay on that bull, he’ll win the whole thing for you.”

  Mann’s grin was broader. “You got that right.”

  The Pierces were in the midway, dodging people. Bob turned to his wife. “How old was he when he was in the seventh grade . . . uh, Miss SuAnne?” He drawled her name in a poor imitation of the fireman.

  “How old was who? Will?” She looked at him.

  “No, not Will. Tommy. How old was he?”

  She spoke without looking at him, “Oh, twelve or thirteen; everybody in the seventh grade is twelve or thirteen, I guess. I don’t remember. Why?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that he might’ve had a crush on you?”

  “Thomas Perrin?” She pondered for a while, then said, “No.” She sounded preoccupied.

  “You never had any indication that he was attracted to you?”

  They were walking through the crowd on the midway, heading to the parking lot. People spoke to them—they spoke back. They traveled some distance before she responded.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Huh? You didn’t say what?”

  She turned to wave at a lady in a denim shirt with blinking lights on the sleeves. When she turned back her expression was noncommittal. “What you said . . . I didn’t say that.”

  “Humph. If all the people I tried to get information from were as wily as you are, we wouldn’t have a prison population problem.”

  She was wide-eyed with innocence. “You should be ashamed. I just finished answering your questions about that boy, and you’re ready to incriminate me.” She sniffed then said, “Lawyers are all alike.”

  He took her arm as they stopped to wait for a wagon to pass. “You don’t fool me, blondie.” He was using his Perry Mason voice. “I saw the way he looked at you.”

  “I’ll have you know I have that effect on a lot of men.” Her nose tilted up. “So there!”

  “Ahhh!” He was winning. “So he did have a crush on you.”

  “He most certainly did not, Mr. District Attorney. And I resent your saying so.” She waited while he unlocked her car door. He pulled the door open and held it while she sat down. She turned to look up at him. “He was madly, unreservedly, head over heels in love with me.” She was giggling when she pulled the door closed.

  They were almost to the hospital when he asked her, “What on earth do you do for a man who saves your son’s life?”

  Bob Pierce didn’t know he was holding the answer.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hmm?”

  Someone was speaking to her, but she couldn’t quite understand what the person was saying. She strained to make out the words. The voice spoke again, loud enough to wake her, and her eyes came open in soft darkness.

  “What?”

  She lay still for a moment, alert and listening, then propped herself up so she could see over the pile of man and pillows on the other side of the bed. Pat kept the alarm clock on his side because she habitually overused the snooze button—it was four in the morning. The edges of their bathroom door bled a rectangular halo of dim light, illuminating the familiar shapes in their bedroom. All was quiet. She and Pat were alone.

  But who had spoken to her?

  She rested her hand on Pat’s back and whispered, “Are you asleep?”

  He grunted something into one of the pillows without waking.

  She was not a light sleeper, and what she had heard was no dream.

  She swung her legs out and sat up on the edge of the bed, carefully surveying the darkness around her, listening. The room was cool and still. Somewhere in the distance a neighbor’s dog barked. She wasn’t sure why she was awake—she couldn’t bring herself to wake Pat, and she couldn’t stay in bed.

  She pulled on Pat’s terrycloth robe and was at the door of their bedroom when she paused. Prompted by an afterthought, she eased open the drawer in her bedside table and took out a small revolver. Holding the gun next to her leg, she moved to their bedroom door and flipped on the light in the den. Nothing. She tiptoed across the den and into the entry foyer; the bathrobe drug the floor; the tile was cold on her bare feet. The front door was locked . . . nothing on the front lawn but moonlight.

  Within a few minutes, she’d made a cursory search of every room in the house, checked the garage, and stepped outside to look in the backyard. More moonlight. The neighbor’s dog was silent.

  The figure she faced when she stepped back into the house gave her a short-lived start; her reflection looked back at her from a full-length mirror mounted in the back hall. She stared at herself for a moment then snorted, “Humph. Well, Lord, I guess You woke me up for a good reason, but it sure wasn’t to fight off a mirror.” She slipped the pistol into a pocket of the robe and padded into the kitchen.

  Pat would not be up for another hour or two, so she puttered around the kitchen, readying the coffeemaker and unloading the dishwasher.

  Minutes later, the percolator’s job was done, and she was on the way to the den and her favorite chair with a steaming mug of coffee. She put the cup on a nearby table with her Bible and was in the middle of curling her feet under her when the voice spoke the words that had waked her: “Be ready.”

  The start she’d gotten from her reflection in the mirror was nothing—she went rigid, her hands braced on the arms of the chair. Even as her
eyes swept the room, she knew she would not see the speaker. Three seconds later, she realized she was sitting still when she needed to be moving. Five seconds after that she was snatching up the phone in the kitchen and dialing a number from memory. Holding the pistol and dialing at the same time was awkward, but that was how it had to be.

  The man she was calling might not consider himself a valuable resource, but he possessed firsthand knowledge of what could happen after an invisible being tells a person to “Be ready.” Hearing what he had to say might prove vital to Missy Patterson.

  Saturday morning in Moores Point was just like any other for A. J. Mason. He was at his kitchen table, reading his Bible and waiting for a pan of water and coffee grounds to boil. He picked the phone up on the second ring. “Hello.”

  “A. J.?”

  Until she started Mrs. Smith’s kindergarten, Missy spent most of her days in the Moores Point pool hall watching her granddaddy and his friends play dominoes. When she was three years old, one of the regulars dubbed the girl’s voice “a buttermilk baritone.” No one had a voice like hers. “Mornin’, Missy. You out at the lake?”

  “No, sir. I’m at my house.”

  The girl had never called him before daylight. “Gettin’ started kinda early, aren’t you?”

  She offered a desperate prayer against what she was sure would be Mason’s response, then told him why she had called. “I just heard the voice.”

  The warm confines of Mason’s kitchen seemed to chill, and he could feel the hair on his forearms stiffen.

  Twenty-three years earlier, in 1945, Missy was a skinny seven-year-old—Mason, a quiet-seeming grandfather with a soft spot for children, especially Missy. On a Sunday morning in June of that year, Mason walked out of church to hear a voice tell him to “Be ready.”